Ten years ago today, it was Greg Lewis

Before we had the Minneapolis Miracle, we had the Metrodome Miracle, and it happened ten years ago today.

Yes, on this date back in 2009, the Minnesota Vikings played their first home game of the 2009 season after a 2-0 start on the road, playing host to the San Francisco 49ers at the Metrodome. Mike Singletary’s crew also came into the game sporting a 2-0 record, and it would be the debut of quarterback Brett Favre in front of his new hometown fans.

You probably could have forgiven Favre for looking past this game. . .after all, Week 4 would see his former team, the Green Bay Packers, coming to the Metrodome for their first battle with Favre since his “betrayal.” But, that’s not what happened.

The Vikings struck first on a 30-yard touchdown pass from Favre to Sidney Rice, and the score got to 13-7 Vikings just before the half. Brad Childress brought Ryan Longwell on to attempt a 59-yard field goal at the end of the half, but the kick was blocked by the Niners and returned for a touchdown by Nate Clements to give the Niners a 14-13 lead going into the locker room.

A field goal for the Niners increased their lead to 17-13, but rookie Percy Harvin took the ensuing kickoff back for a 101-yard score to give the Vikings the lead back at 20-17 going into the fourth quarter.

San Francisco took the lead back halfway through the fourth quarter on a 20-yard touchdown from Shaun Hill to Vernon Davis, Davis’ second scoring catch of the day. That put them up 24-20, and the Vikings’ final possession started from their own 20-yard line with 1:29 left on the clock.

You can see the entire drive in the video below.

Favre completed five of his first seven pass attempts on the drive, and the Vikings found themselves on the San Francisco 32-yard line with just 12 seconds left on the clock.

Lewis, who had only been with the team for a couple of weeks, was in the game in place of Bernard Berrian. In two seasons with the Vikings, he caught just 26 passes and only scored one touchdown, but that one score is one of the more memorable scores in recent Vikings history.

Our Game Thread for the second half of that game. . .remember, this was before Twitter was huge, so a lot of the DN Staff was hanging out in the comments section. . .was pretty freaking amazing, to say the least. Seriously, you can see the tide shifting from “we’re completely screwed” to “holy crap” over the course of the fourth quarter. Looking back on it, that was a hell of a lot of fun.

But, we wanted to take a moment to mark the 10th anniversary. I want to recommend the story done by the folks from Zone Coverage where they interviewed Ben Leber, Kevin Stefanski, and Sage Rosenfels about the play, too.

Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen!